SEATTLE – Seattle Sonics general manager Rick Sund does things on his own terms.
Like spending more than 27 years with four NBA teams in front office and executive positions — without being fired.
Like choosing an internship with the Milwaukee Bucks over a tryout with the team.
Like turning down scholarship offers from perennial basketball powerhouse Kentucky and perennial football juggernaut Notre Dame to play both sports at Northwestern.
Like chastising a Sonics employee for allowing onions to infiltrate his lunchtime hamburger.
Pardon Sund if he’s a tad uneasy this summer. After only three months in the Pacific Northwest, he faces the ominous task of turning around a basketball team that regularly went May-deep into the NBA playoffs a few years ago but has missed the playoffs two of the past three seasons.
Settling into his sparsely decorated office in the shadow of the Space Needle, Sund seems worlds apart from Evanston and his days as captain of the NU hoops team, when he won one team MVP and two academic All-Big Ten awards. However, the Elgin, Ill., native keeps his college memories close and looks back fondly on the four years that gave him a jump-start on life.
“There was an intimacy there that I really liked,” said Sund, 50. “I was a good student at best in high school and I got in because of my athletics. I left (college) as a very good student. The greatest thing I got out of NU was the ability to think for myself.”
Donning the glistening gold of Notre Dame was a childhood dream for Sund, who hardly gave a second thought to purple and white. In the end, academics proved to be the deciding factor. Sund said he felt most comfortable with the course work and tutorial program at NU.
And a decent sports program didn’t hurt, either. NU’s basketball team, which Sund considered “upper-division,” was coming off a 9-2 start to the 1968-69 season. He admits in retrospect that the success NU’s revenue teams enjoyed in those years was more of a fluke than a sign of things to come. Sund’s NU team had a record of 17-54 in his three seasons.
“I was lucky that we were even competitive,” said Sund, who lettered in basketball from 1970-1973. “Our basketball team was second-tier. And the sad thing is, before they went to the Rose Bowl recently, the last time Northwestern football had a winning record was when I was there.”
Still, Sund made the most of his talent, receiving scholarship offers for both basketball and football, and accepting the former. But before the 6-foot-4 guard/forward starred for the Cats, he spent a mandatory season playing on the freshman team, bumping bodies with varsity players and gaining an invaluable year of maturation.
“When I was there, freshmen weren’t eligible,” Sund said. “You had your own team. You had a whole year to get acclimated to college life and college sports. Making the team and playing as a sophomore was huge back then.”
Sund spent his first year at NU living in Elder Hall, and he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity, where he would live his sophomore year.
Bryan Ashbaugh, a 6-foot-8 center who played with Sund for two years at NU, described him as an aggressive and relentless competitor.
“You could always count on Rick to work his tail off,” said Ashbaugh, 49. “He had a bit of a hot temper. We used to beat up on each other in practice. But we also laughed a lot.”
Ashbaugh recalled a particularly euphoric Sund moment in NU’s game against Wisconsin the 1972-1973 season.
“We were behind the entire game, there were 10 seconds left and we were down one,” he said. “The play was meant for me, and I got the ball in the corner way out of position. Rick came off a screen, caught a pass from me and nailed the shot. He wasn’t known to be a great shooter, so it was even more amazing.”
With his basketball successes mounting, Sund accepted an offer from the NU football team to try out in the spring of his junior year. He played his senior season on the gridiron before returning to the court in the winter.
That following June, Sund graduated with a political science degree. He was ready to take his shot at the NBA. But once again, Sund opted to take a different route. He signed on as an intern with the Milwaukee Bucks while using funds from an NCAA Division I scholarship to enroll in a highly selective post-graduate program at Ohio University. He eventually earned a master’s degree in athletic administration from Ohio and worked full-time with the Bucks as an administrative assistant, scouting college players who were just a few years younger.
Ashbaugh wasn’t surprised to learn that Sund made the move upstairs instead of staying on the court.
“He knew a lot about sports,” Ashbaugh said. “He’s a straight shooter and very direct with people — players like that.”
Taking advantage of his mobility and youthful exuberance, Sund left his job with Milwaukee after five years for a more uncertain role with the expansion Dallas Mavericks.
“I got the (Dallas) job because I was young and single,” Sund said. “More qualified people didn’t want to leave their teams. I was 27. So if the NBA didn’t allow the team to join the league, big deal, I’m out of a job.”
Instead, he became the youngest director of player personnel in the NBA and helped lead the Mavericks to several playoff appearances. Fifteen years after his original hiring with Dallas, Sund was ready for another move — this time closer to home. Sund went back to the Midwest, taking a job with the Detroit Pistons.
“I went back to the NU football games a lot,” said Sund, who spoke recently at the ‘N’ Club and went with his college friends to the 2000 Alamo Bowl and 1996 Rose Bowl. “It was easier to stay in touch being in Detroit.”
With two years left on his contract with Detroit, Sund decided to accept an offer from Seattle, leaving behind his wife, his daughter — who started for the University of Michigan women’s basketball team — and his son, a freshman in high school.
Sund constantly reminds himself of how fortunate he has been to be able to pick and choose his career moves.
“A lot of my colleagues have been with 10 teams in eight cities, with kids,” he said. “I’ve been really lucky. When I got into the league, front offices were small, only about four or five people. I’d like to say that a lot of my success was grace, manners and ingenuity — but a lot of it was timing.”
Still, Sund always imagined himself being more involved in college athletics. He says that somewhere along the line, he’d consider going back to NU.
While Sund said he can’t give advice to NU Director of Athletics Rick Taylor or basketball coach Bill Carmody, he can, however, remember how things used to be.
“The whole collegiate athletic scene was different back then,” he said. “You didn’t have ESPN, you didn’t have those beautiful arenas — everyone played in field houses. Things were a lot more regional. You didn’t know as much about the other conferences as you do now.”
Sund holds out hope that the Cats could someday match the recent success of other private universities by providing their athletes with a complete four-year package.
“I’ve always been a believer that NU can be competitive, not only the Big Ten but in the nation,” he said. “It’s been proven. Teams like Stanford and Duke have been able to do that. Those are the basketball programs that have been able to have players stay and enjoy their college experience.”
Just like Sund did.
